from the time before Ragnarok. Some, like Jane Eyre, I’d heard of, but others were new to me. There was a whole shelf of books written in ancient Norse, and another full of thin envelopes covered in strange pictures.
I started a bit as music suddenly filled the room. When I turned, I found Marroc stepping away from a record player.
I’d heard of such contraptions, but never seen or heard a working one. It was like my little thumb drive, but with a pleasant crackle. From the record player, a man’s voice filled the room. Deep and rich, he sang in a language I didn’t recognize.
Bottles of amber liquid stood on a mahogany desk, runes blazing on the glass. Whiskey, I thought. He uncorked one of the bottles, then poured two glasses of whatever it was.
He crossed to me, handing me one of the glasses. When I drank it, it burned my throat. But Marroc seemed to relish it, closing his eyes as he drank like it was the nectar of the gods.
“Do you have any Rick Roll?” I asked. “The music.”
Marroc opened his eyes, looking for a moment like I’d ruined his enjoyment. Then he quirked an eyebrow, lip twitching in a slight smile. He leaned over and scribbled in his notebook. This is Luciano Pavarotti.
As if that explained everything.
“Okay,” I said. “I was asking for Rick Roll.”
His lips tightened into a line, and he wrote, Pavarotti was a classically trained tenor. And I would like to ask that you please never again sing in my presence.
“Hmm… I guess I’m not inclined to make you comfortable, since I’m your prisoner and you trapped me here. Guess you’re stuck with my musical talent till you set me free.”
When the first song finished, a woman’s voice filled the room. I’d heard plenty of women sing, but the longing in her voice was palpable, like listening to a lovesick nightingale. I’d never heard anything so beautiful.
“Who is she?” I asked.
Maria Callas, wrote Marroc. La Divina—she had the voice of an angel.
“What is she singing about?” I plopped down on the couch, wondering why he’d brought me down here.
In this aria, she’s singing to the moon. She’s asking for peace.
When the song stopped, Marroc turned off the record player. Though I didn’t quite see him move away from the shelf, Marroc sat across from me and wrote on his notepad, I have a few questions.
“As your prisoner, I don’t suppose I can say no, can I?”
First of all, Marroc wrote, we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Marroc. And you’re? He stopped writing and looked at me.
“I’m Ali,” I said. “Short for Astrid. I’m a Night Elf, obviously. One of the Shadow Lord’s chief assassins, head of thieves, hider of bodies—”
I need your help, wrote Marroc, cutting me off with his writing.
My eyes narrowed; I sensed a trap.
“You’re a lich,” I said. “A powerful dark sorcerer with no soul. How could I possibly help you?”
I don’t have to stay cursed.
“Your soul is trapped in Helheim. Which seems fair, because the High Elves wouldn’t have imprisoned you if you were the law-abiding sort.”
They imprisoned you as well.
“I am definitely not the law-abiding sort,” I said firmly. “I am a thief and an assassin, as I said.”
And that is why I need your help. Before I became this—he stopped writing to gesture to himself—I removed my soul from my body. I hid it in a safe place.
Now that was interesting. “Where? How?”
I cannot tell you. Just trust me that I know exactly where it is.
“So, what do you want from me?”
I cannot rejoin my soul to my body unless I banish the curse I created.
“Why should I help you do that?”
He leaned back in his chair, looking as though he was in complete control of the situation. Because you will get to complete the task the Shadow Lords gave you.
My stomach swooped. He was good at bargaining, truly, but I didn’t give him an answer yet.
He started writing again. What do you think you were sent to steal?
I stiffened. Thing was that I didn’t know what, specifically, the Lords had wanted me to take. “What do you mean?”
Revna cut your finger off. Why?
“The gold ring. She wanted it.”
The pieces started to slide together in my mind. She was the daughter of the king. She could buy a gold ring every day for the rest of her life if she wanted. Was that the item that could lead us to Galin—the sorcerer who’d trapped my people in the